On being interviewed by the press

I've been interviewed a few times by the press for various and sundry. Local papers, a national publication (for a business I was starting), once even by a theatre critic in the Sun-Times for a stage musical that I worked on in the city (um, that would be Chicago, not Lake Bluff). I was just interviewed by the Pioneer Press, which is being gracious enough to run an article about Mr. Mark's Music Together in a couple of their papers this week. (I'm blushing. Not really.) I never know how these are going to turn out. I must have said a thousand, maybe five thousand words about my new program, and the article will have, what, three or maybe four short quotes from me? Did I get what I wanted to say across to the interviewer? Did I bury her with words and she'll just choose tidbits at random? I sure hope I was grammatical in most of my responses. OMG, I hope I, like, didn't start, like, using the word 'like', like, too much! (I do that when I get nervous.)

I have to say--regardless of what the interviewer quotes me as saying--I think this is the interview I talked the most at. I was just clipping along like a sibilant streak, gushing about early childhood and music, Music Together® philosophy, what's great about the classes, etc. It was pretty easy to gush, mainly for two reasons: one, the reporter didn't try to shush me up (not too much) and two, I've been gushing about this stuff for years. It just gets easier, even though I'm really not much of a public speaker, I get shy, I get tongue-tied (I have terrible tip-of-the-tongue syndrome), I stop making sense after a while. (Stayed tuned in a couple of sentences.) But, believe you me, when I get up on my soap box about something I really believe in, it's hard to get me to step down. And my work with families and music-making is one of those things I really believe in. As in, I've seen so many families have so much fun making music. I've seen so many children using music in their development and becoming happier, more centered children for it. Not just in music classes, but families I meet at parties, performances, parks, etc. who enjoy singing together where ever (home, school, church, picnics), who actually enjoy taking their kids to lessons, who enjoy singing Beatles songs over and over because that's what one of their kids is learning to play on the guitar, or piano or diggereedoo.

Listening to music is like reading the paper or a news feed or blog. Participating in making music is like writing the article or being interviewed or blogging, more fulfilling and generally more fun.

Being photographed for the article, however, was like sight-reading music, at least for me. Much more stressful than the interview.